Reservoir Worms
by jacobk
Summary: Taylor initially wanted to be a confidential informant. What might have happened if Armsmaster were enough of an amoral jackass to take her up on it?


_AN: It is kind of interesting to think about how Lisa's little rescue project would have turned out if Taylor had made more of an effort at being an informant._

 _AN2: Two divergences here: one pre-story, that Taylor's rooftop meeting goes pretty much as in canon, but they put off the trip to the lair until the next day. The other one is that Armsmaster's attitude is a little different._

 _AN3: Obvious homage is hopefully obvious._

ooOoo

After I finished explaining my plan, Armsmaster just stood and stared at me for a minute.

"You've received an offer to join a notorious criminal gang. One of the members is a Thinker so strong that to tell me any details would be guaranteed to give you away. So instead you plan to lie to her face, pretend to join the group, and then come back and give me all of their secrets all tied up in a bow?"

His expression, as much of it as I could see, was neutral and his tone of voice wasn't exactly mocking, but it wasn't exactly enthusiastic either. Hearing the whole thing laid out like that by somebody else was a little discouraging, but I wasn't about to back down now.

"Yes."

I've never been one for long speeches. If I kept things short it was less likely that I would embarass myself in front of one of the city's leading heroes.

"All right," he said, nodding decisively. "Let's do this. The Director always vetoes any plan that could get a Ward killed, so this will be a fun change of pace."

He said it so casually it took me a second to pick out the key word from that sentence.

"Killed?"

"Two of your new teammates have killed before. Costumed criminals don't take any more kindly to confidential informants than anybody else," he said, then paused. I had the sense that he was judging my demeanor. "I wouldn't think any less of you if you don't want to take that risk."

"No," I said, shaking my head. I'd come too far to back out now. "I'm doing this."

"Ok," he said, before tapping a command into the side of his halberd. "You'll need an anecdote."

He pressed down on the handle of his weapon and a small section of it swung open along a previously invisible hinge. He reached into the storage compartment and pulled out a small roll of paper, which he lobbed towards me. I was so focused on what he was doing-and then on making the catch without looking too awkward-that I wasn't sure I had heard him correctly.

"A what?"

"An anecdote. A personal story about an event that happened in your life. Ideally it should be entertaining. A little humor, a little action, and a reflection of who you are as a person."

"I know what an anecdote is," I said. "What I mean is, why do I need one? What's the point?"

"You want to pass yourself off as a villain, right?"

I would have thought it would be hard to be condescending with most of your face hidden by a helmet, but apparently Armsmaster had plenty of practice.

"They've already invited me to join," I replied. "I think we're past the point of establishing my bona fides."

"They invited the girl with the creepy looking outfit who sicced a bunch of black widows on Lung to join the gang," Armaster said. "What are they going to see when you're hanging out and the masks come off?"

I gave my reply some thought. Three of the four members of the gang had seen me without a mask, but we hadn't had a chance to talk much on the roof. I wouldn't say they really got to know Taylor Hebert, at least not yet. Just going by the way people treated me at school, I had to think that I didn't cut a particularly intimidating figure. Maybe it would be different with people who knew about my powers, but maybe it wouldn't.

"Maybe I could use a little help with my image," I admitted.

"Thus, the anecdote," Armaster said, pointing at the paper in my hand. "You don't just need to memorize the story. You need to own it. Every little detail. Starting now."

"Ok, ok," I said, unrolling the paper. I skimmed quickly through the first page. "Huh, I didn't know-"

ooOoo

"Toybox has a delivery service?" Regent-Alec, now-asked.

"It's not like Amazon, exactly," I said, gratefully accepting a cup of tea from Lisa before sitting down at the kitchen table. "But they understand that for loyal customers, having to track down their new location for every order is a bit of a hassle."

Just as the Undersiders hadn't struck me as serious criminals, their home base didn't exactly scream "supervillain hideout." Well, the entry did, a little bit. The abandoned factory downstairs was a nice touch. But the upstairs felt like a home. Admittedly, a home decorated by teenagers with a lot of money to spend, but still a home.

The whole thing was an open loft, other than the private rooms set off to the side. The living area was marked by a large flat screen tv, complete with a bewildering array of video game systems, and an expensive looking leather couch and loveseat. The kitchen area was set up to allow for a decent view of the TV while you were standing at the stove. I didn't think that was an accident.

Lisa, as the mysterious villain Tattletale had introduced herself, was sitting kitty corner from me at the kitchen table. Alec was sprawled out on the couch with his chin hanging over the back rest. Brian, the leader of the team, was sitting on a bar stool, casually leaning back against the kitchen counter.

"These days they use some kind of teleporter. I don't think they liked relying on non-Tinkers," I said, taking a sip of tea. "But for a while they needed couriers."

"And what, you could carry a lot of stuff with your swarm?" Regent asked, jokingly.

I shook my head.

"My power isn't just controlling bugs. I can keep track of every single one as an individual," I explained. "If I put an ant on somebody's pant cuff and the same ant shows up again five blocks later it's a little suspicious, you know? It's not perfect, but I'm pretty tough to sneak up on."

"Clever," Brian said, and I looked over to see that he was smiling at me. "In this game it's not all about who has the strongest power. It's about who knows how to use the power they have. I knew you had a good head on your shoulders."

Meeting Brian had been a surprise. I had expected the intimidating leader of the Undersiders to cut a rough figure outside of costume. When he took off his helmet to introduce himself, I had been presented with somebody who wouldn't have warranted a second look if I saw him at Winslow. Well, he would have warranted a second look, but not in a potential criminal kind of way. When he smiled like he was now his whole face took on a sort of boyish appearance, a reminder of the fact that he was only a year or two older than I was.

Not that the rest of his build wasn't that of a man. He was tall and filled out with the sort of practical strength I associated with somebody who had to rely on his physical abilities to make a living, rather than somebody who just spent a lot of time in the gym. He had the sort of comfortable, confident presence that made you just want to-

"So, what happened on the job?"

Lisa's voice broke me from my thoughts, and I felt my cheeks flushing a bit as I turned to look at her. She was smiling as if she knew something I didn't know, but she pretty much always did that, so I did my best to ignore her as I regained my composure.

"Well..."

ooOoo

Brockton Bay's train station, much like the rest of the city, had seen better days. Built during the boom times when Brockton Bay seemed destined to be an important industrial hub serving an ever brighter tomorrow, these days the soaring art deco design was marred by an overlay of graffiti and gang tagging.

Still, the station saw a decent amount of traffic. Trains offered a way to reach other cities on the east coast that was cheaper than flying, and presented a lot less by way of security hassles. I suspect Toybox was more interested in the latter feature than the former.

It felt a little like waiting for a blind date. I was wearing a pink t-shirt, as instructed-I had to buy it specifically for the job, it was a little irritating that my contact had assumed I would have one-and had a matching scarf wrapped around my neck. It was one of those late winter days that reminded you that spring was coming soon, so while my scarf wasn't terribly out of place I was just about the only person in the station who was still wearing her cold weather outfit.

Apparently some thinker had helped design a series of handoffs for each delivery so that no one person in the chain could piece together the identities of the buyer and seller. It seemed like a lot of wasted effort to me, but if they wanted to pay me a thousand bucks to act as a glorified courier service I was happy to take it.

The appointed time arrived and nobody had even seemed to notice I was there. I was just about to give the whole thing up as a waste of time when a man in a suit sat down next to me. He spent a few minutes reading the newspaper, then stood up and walked away, leaving a duffel bag behind.

I waited a few minutes before I stood up and walked away, grabbing the bag as I went. It was a lot lighter than I thought it would be, and there were none of the metal clanking noises I had half expected to hear. There was no way of knowing that it was full of black market tinker gear, which I guess was kind of the point. I felt a momentary thrill of fear at the thought that I had just stolen some civilian's luggage, but when I glanced down I saw the top of the bag was decorated with a smiley face sticker, just as I had been told to expect.

When you step out of the rail station you'll find yourself in the heart of the downtown business area. It doesn't have the same sort of tourist draw as the Boardwalk, but it's a busy place. Besides the obvious office buildings there is also a whole ecosystem of supporting industries: lunch restaurants, dry cleaners, coffee shops, that kind of thing. If you took a right out of the station you'd be facing the Medhall Pharmaceutical tower. If you took another quick right you'd find yourself in a dingy alleyway.

Brockton Bay's answer to the problem of how to present a pretty facade to the world was to shove all of the messy stuff into a maze of alleys hidden behind buildings and only tangentially intersecting with larger thoroughfares. If you knew what you were doing you could get from one end of town to the other without stepping onto a major street. If you didn't know what you were doing you'd quickly find yourself lost in a sketchy part of town.

I could cheat, of course. The area didn't lack for bugs, and I used strategically placed clusters to map out the area for me. Besides letting me stay out of sight, taking to the alleys would force anybody trying to follow me to get out of their vehicles and walk, which should make them easier for me to spot.

After a few minutes of walking with no suspicious activity showing up, I was feeling pretty good about myself. That was when a dumpster came flying out of nowhere to slam into the wall right in front of me.

I jumped back and pressed myself up against the wall without even thinking about it. I wasn't close enough to the collision to get hit by the filth as the dumpster's contents were dislodged, but I was still closer than I would have liked to be to that kind of impact.

The dumpster had come from an alley that dead-ended into the one that I was using. I used a small cloud of flies to discreetly scan that alley for capes. I barely had any warning that somebody was heading my way before Glory Girl stalked into view.

Just like that, I was fucked. I can do some tricky things with my bugs, but nothing in my bag of tricks was going to do more than slightly inconvenience a flying brick at close range. I wasn't wearing any kind of protective costume, but this fucking bitch obviously didn't give two shits about the unwritten rules-

ooOoo

"There's a lot of swearing," I said, looking up from the roll of paper to offer my opinion. Armsmaster put the back of his hand up against his forehead and went into a mock soon.

"Good heavens, you're right. You'll never blend in at Lord Fauntleroy's garden party using that kind of gutter talk," he said, before bringing his hand down to tug at his chin. "On the other hand, if you were trying to infiltrate a criminal gang, that kind of language might almost be expected."

Somehow I had never imagined that working with my childhood hero could be this infuriating.

"Do you practice being such an asshole, or does it just come naturally to you?"

He reacted to the insult with a smile.

"Look at that, you're getting into character already."

I took a deep breath, both to calm myself down and to give me a second to think before I replied.

"This is supposed to be my story, right? If I try to talk like somebody I'm not, they'll pick up on that. I don't swear that much, and I wouldn't call Glory Girl something so demeaning."

He straightened himself up, all traces of humor suddenly vanishing from his posture.

"This is your story, but it's you as a villain. There isn't a lot of love lost between the different sides of the cape game. I call Skidmark and Squealer a couple of scumbags when I talk about them with my colleagues, and they call me a lot of names I won't repeat for fear of offending your delicate sensibilities," he said, then paused. "Maybe swearing isn't your thing. But you need to figure out how to convey to them that you're on their side. It's ok to have a certain grudging respect for a halberd-wielding hero who's just an undeniable badass. But having any kind of soft spot for Glory Girl just isn't going to fly."

ooOoo

"... this fucking bitch obviously... fucking bitch, fucking bitch, fucking bitch! Gah, why can't I get it right," I grumbled, tossing the script back down on the bed. I kept stumbling over this section of the story and I was starting to get frustrated.

I was sitting in the comfortable confines of my room. For today I had added a new piece of decoration: my mask was hanging from my bedroom mirror. I thought it would help my motivation to have something to look at.

I had left for school this morning just like normal. I just didn't get off the bus when it arrived in front of Winslow. Eventually it completed a full circuit and I hopped off and walked back to my house. I had a more important assignment to work on than anything my teachers could give me.

I could have tried faking an illness and asking my dad to let me stay home. He was a soft touch, but with my luck he'd insist on taking a sick day to try to nurse me back to health. Besides, it was better all around if he had no inkling of what I was getting up to in my free time.

I stood up from the bed and walked up to the mirror, doing my best to look myself in the eye.

"You can do this, Taylor," I said, trying to convince myself. "You are a stone cold badass of a supervillain who's going to take this city by storm."

Something was missing. I plucked the mask down and tugged it on over my face.

"Nobody respects poor little Taylor Hebert, but they'll soon be running in fear from the mighty Insect... Girl... Man..."

I sighed. Without the rest of the costume the mask just looked like something a kid would wear for Halloween. I pulled it off and turned back at the mirror, trying to find the villain behind the plain face looking back at me.

"I'm Taylor Hebert. Everybody I know has spent the last year lining up to shit on my life, and now I have the power to do something about it," I said, tentative, sounding things out. "I'm not going on a killing spree-I'm not some kind of psycho-but I'm sure as hell going to use my power to make my life a little better."

"And why shouldn't I?" I continued, my voice becoming stronger as I felt a small spark of resentment growing into something more. "The law? What exactly has the law ever done for me? Be a hero? Where were the heroes when my life was being turned into a living hell?"

"What do I think about Glory Girl?" I asked, slapping my hand down on the top of my dresser. "Where the fuck was she when I was trapped in that locker, trying to claw my way out of that horrible filth? Deciding whether she should dump her cape boyfriend for a new celebrity boyfriend?"

"Fuck Glory Girl, and fuck anybody who tries to stop me from making things right."

I tried to hold on to that sense of righteous fury as I walked back over to the bed and found my place in the story.

"..this fucking bitch-no," I said, "this fucking cunt obviously doesn't give a fuck about the unwritten rules."

"Best case scenario, she freaks out about being covered with bugs and I can use them to block her vision while I get away. But considering she's invincible and she can fly, that's not much of a plan. I was just coming to terms with how fucked I was when she marched right up to the dumpster and reached down and flipped the thing over like it was nothing."

"Once the dumpster was sent flying out of the way I could see what she had been focused on this whole time: a skinhead, his back against the wall and his head not six inches from where the dumpster had hit, sitting in a pool of his own piss."

ooOoo

"And you were just cool as a cucumber yourself," Alec said. He had taken the c-bomb in stride and was as ready as ever to offer a sarcastic comment. Brian had actually rocked back a bit. I guess it goes to show that even the toughest guy can have a sensitive side. Lisa had just smiled. I wondered if she had her own history with Glory Girl.

"No, I was pretty much frozen in fear," I said, then paused to take another sip of my tea. "Her power does that when she's pissed off, it generates this aura of terror. Not to mention the fact that she can throw cars around if she feels like it."

ooOoo

The one saving grace was that she never even glanced my way. She kept her eyes locked on the skinhead as she reached down and twisted one hand into a solid grip on his shirt. She hauled him up and slammed him up against the brick wall in one smooth motion. She said something to him that I couldn't make out over the blood pounding in my ears. His reply was easier to make out.

"Lick my hairy balls, you bitch!"

He was practically screaming at her, and he followed it up with a glob of spit to the face. The spit just seemed to slide off of her, but I could tell from the sudden surge of power in her aura that he had managed to piss her off even further. I couldn't tell from where I was standing if he was high on something or just had a complete disregard from his own safety.

Glory Girl turned away from me and chucked the guy sidearm into the side of the dumpster. He hit it hard enough to dent the metal. He went limp on contact and slid to the ground without any sign of conscious movement.

It crossed my mind that I had never seen anybody die before. I pressed myself back against the wall and tried to think inconscpicuous thoughts.

Glory Girl floated over the to the skinhead and checked him for a pulse. I saw her nod to herself before pulling out a cell phone. In the sudden quiet in the alley I could clearly hear her side of the conversation.

"Hey, it's me. Yeah, I found him-that's kind of the problem. I need-yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm in the alley off Brown between Main and Oak."

She hung up the phone and just stood there looking down at the unconscious thug. I thought about trying to sneak away, but doing anything that might make a sounds seemed like a bad idea.

It felt like a couple of hours, but it was probably only a couple of minutes before my bugs alerted me to the presence of another figure walking down the alley. A few seconds later I was treated to the sight of the second member of New Wave I'd seen today, Panacea.

It was hard to tell through the bulky robe she was wearing, but she seemed kind of pissed off. She waved off Glory Girl's greeting to crouch down over the thug. After a minute she shook her head.

"Slingshot break to his ribs, fractured clavicle, broken mandible, broken scapula, fractured sternum, bruised lung, broken ulna, broken radius-you really need to stop doing this, Victoria."

Glory Girl spread out her hands in a show of innocence, though Panacea hadn't turned to look.

"I know, I know. He just made me so mad, you know? And you can heal him, right?"

"I can, but that's really not the point. I can't heal the dead, and this guy was pretty close to that," Panacea said, turning to look Glory Girl in the eye. "And even if you don't kill somebody, if word of this were to get... out..."

She trailed off as she looked over Glory Girl's shoulder and saw where I had been standing this whole time. Glory Girl followed her gaze and spotted me...

ooOoo

"I have never seen such a quick personality change in my life," I said, shaking my head. "One minute she's beating a grown man half to death, the next she's begging me to keep her secret."

"So what'd you do? Work some kind of blackmail angle?" Alec asked, leaning forward almost far enough to fall over the back of the couch.

"Are you kidding? I really didn't want to giver her any incentive to branch out from beating up skinheads," I said. I finished off my tea and leaned back in my chair.

"I handed her my bag, walked over, and kicked that Nazi right in the kidneys. Told her if she has to have a hobby, beating up E88 goons seems like a pretty good one. It was actually kind of cute how her whole face lit up. I don't think Panacea liked it," I said, shrugging, "but I can live with that. She gave me back the bag and sent me on my way."

"No shit?" Alec asked.

"That is the story of how Glory Girl became part of the Toybox delivery chain," I said, then looked at Alec. "No shit."

"Sounds like you've got a knack for exciting first days," Brian said, walking over to rest a hand on my shoulder. "I'm glad you can handle yourself, but I want you to know that we're not expecting you to take on Lung or Glory Girl on your own. The whole point of being on a team is to make sure that you don't get in over your head."

I felt myself flushing a bit as I looked up at his friendly smile. I couldn't help but think that maybe I already was.

ooOoo


End file.
